Word: finkelstein
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Wrapped in his long-fringed, white prayer shawl, and dressed in a white linen robe, Rabbi Finkelstein stood on the dais; looking to the East, with his back to the congregation, he faced the Ark of the Covenant. On the lectern before him lay the great scrolls of the Torah, the book of the law of Moses. Rabbi Finkelstein's clenched right hand beat upon his breast in the traditional gesture of sorrow. Clear and strong, in the twang and guttural of the Hebrew chant, his voice rose...
...Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, teacher of future rabbis at Manhattan's Jewish Theological Seminary and leader of perhaps the most influential school of Jewish theology in the U.S. today, the shofar will herald the most stirring joy and hope of a lifetime. For he believes-and on abundant evidence-that U.S. Jews are returning to their synagogues and temples as never before...
...When I was a seminary student 40 years ago," says Finkelstein, "it seemed so clear to us that our faith could not survive here that we even wondered for what purpose in the Divine Economy the Jews had been brought to the New World." The ghetto and the pogrom had annealed Judaism in the hearts of countless generations of Jews, almost since the great dispersion. But in the freedom and prosperity of the Melting Pot, that branded faith seemed to be fading out. Says Finkelstein...
...Endures. There is no one spokesman for U.S. Judaism, no central authority, no High Priest. All good Jews, in varying degrees of literalness, believe in the Law, but U.S. Judaism is a spectrum shading off by minute gradations from ultra-orthodoxy to ultra-modernism. In this spectrum, Finkelstein, a traditionalist with one keen, dark eye on the future, stands almost dead center...
...cover their heads, as among the Orthodox. Conservative Jews are taught that, as Jews, they have been chosen by God for a spiritual purpose-but that those of other faiths, including Christians and Moslems, have also been chosen. Conservative Judaism is the middle ground on which Rabbi Finkelstein has taken his stand...